Sawt Falasteen - Israel strikes Gaza as military recovers five captive bodies

A group supporting Israeli hostages still held in the Palestinian territory welcomed the rescue but alleged "sabotage" of efforts to free others. The accusation from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum came with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on a visit to Washington.

Netanyahu -- whose critics accuse him of prolonging the fighting -- is on Thursday to meet US President Joe Biden, who has been pushing a truce and hostage-release deal.

In a speech to the US Congress on Wednesday, Netanyahu downplayed Palestinian civilian casualties during the more than nine months of war between Israeli forces and Hamas.

He again vowed to destroy the Islamist group and bring home the hostages.

The Hamas attack that started the war on October 7 resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people in Israel, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Out of 251 people taken hostage that day, 111 are still held in Gaza, including 39 the military says are dead.

At least 39,175 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's military campaign in Gaza since the war began, according to the health ministry of the Hamas-run territory, which does not give details of civilian and militant deaths.

The latest toll includes 30 deaths over the previous 24 hours.

Palestinian medical services on Thursday said their teams had transported four dead and 12 wounded after a strike on a house in the Gaza City area in the north of the territory.

- 'Crisis of trust' -

An AFP correspondent reported air strikes and machine gun fire from tanks in Gaza City. To the south, witnesses said there was shelling in the Khan Yunis city and Rafah areas, as well as air strikes in Al-Qarara, near Khan Yunis.

Israel's military said the five bodies recovered from Gaza, including those of two soldiers and two reservists, had been returned to Israel following a rescue operation on Wednesday in Khan Yunis.

After the military warned it would "forcefully operate" in the area, the Gaza health ministry on Monday said an Israeli operation had killed 70 people and wounded more than 200.

The five Israelis recovered had previously been announced as having died, and the military as well as the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said militants had killed them on October 7.

The Forum has regularly protested in Israel for a deal to get the remaining captives home.

On Thursday it demanded an urgent meeting with Israel's team for negotiating a ceasefire and hostage-release deal, saying a "crisis of trust" had emerged.

"It has now become apparent that the information provided to the hostages' families did not accurately reflect the situation's reality," the group said in a statement.

"This foot-dragging is a deliberate sabotage of the chance to bring our loved ones back. It effectively undermines the negotiations and indicates a serious moral failure."

Anti-government protesters who have also regularly demonstrated, sometimes by the tens of thousands, have accused Netanyahu of dragging out the war. So have some analysts.

Far-right members of Netanyahu's ruling coalition oppose a truce, which would involve Palestinian prisoners being freed in exchange for the hostages.

After Netanyahu's speech to Congress, Hamas issued a statement saying the Israeli premier "thwarted all efforts aimed at ending the war and concluding a deal to release the prisoners," despite Egyptian and Qatari mediation.

- Delegation delayed -

A senior US administration official said negotiations for a Gaza deal were in the last stretch and Biden would try to close some "final gaps" with Netanyahu.

But a source with knowledge of the talks said separately that the arrival of an Israeli delegation in Doha for talks on Israeli demands for a deal had been postponed from Thursday to next week.

Washington has been increasingly alarmed by the humanitarian toll of the Gaza war, but in his speech to Congress, Netanyahu dismissed "all the lies" about civilian fatalities.

AFP correspondents in Gaza have daily witnessed children and women brought into hospitals injured or dead.

In May, the United Nations said women and children made up at least 56 percent of those killed during the war, based on a breakdown provided by Gaza's health ministry at that time.

Washington on Wednesday criticised an Israeli bill that would declare the UN agency for Palestinian refugees -- the main aid agency in Gaza -- a terrorist organisation.

"UNRWA is not a terrorist organisation," said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller, urging a halt to the legislation.

R.Shaban--SF-PST